‘Thought without an image’ Deleuzian philosophy as an ethics of the event

Abstract

According to Gilles Deleuze, all thinking, acting, experience and perception – indeed, all of life – is a process of imaging. Following Deleuze, philosophy then is not a discipline concerned with uncovering what the self is. Philosophy, rather, is an interrogation into the production of images of thought and ultimately it is the quest for ‘thought without an image.’ As philosophers, our task is not to establish the truest world but to think the multiplicity and plurality of perceptions that unfold divergent worlds. In short: the key issue for philosophy is not to point to a more real image, but to insist that thinking, in so far as it is a potential for imaging, can only be maximized by not allowing any single image to govern all others. This is an ethics of the event, defined not by what we are, but by the potential of thought to open itself to the sphere of the virtual - that is, to what is not already given.